Many moving projects in industry relate to moving entire production lines or sections thereof. In the present specification, the term “production line” is to be understood in a broad sense, as any group of machinery, equipment, or furniture, the members of which are placed in accurate positions relative to each other. Thus, consecutive pieces of equipment or machinery in the group may, e.g., be lined up accurately relative to each other to be able to transfer between them items or products of the relevant process. Quite often, the pieces of equipment are resting on the floor but secured to one another by connective members, conveyors, or similar, as well as cables, wiring, and piping. Consequently, the relative positions of the pieces of equipment must be maintained in order for the group to function properly. The objects may be secured to the floor as well.
Moving of such production lines the traditional way includes disconnecting each object of the group (each machine, etc.) from supply lines and from consecutive pieces of machinery, often dismounting of fragile, protruding members of the machine, shifting the machine out from the production line, and moving the machine by traditional means. This method will almost certainly require involvement of personnel of several different skills, e.g., electricians, pipe fitters, mechanics, etc.
The largest disadvantage, however, of the traditional method of moving production lines is that the entire line will have to be re-aligned from scratch on its new location. This will very often indeed prove to be a very time-consuming and thus expensive project, again involving personnel of several skills and most often fitters from the original suppliers of the various machines in the production line.
The major part of these disadvantages would be avoided if it would be possible to move the entire production line as one or few “pieces” of machinery.
Moving of long and voluminous loads on air cushions is generally known, such as described in, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 3,796,162 disclosing moving of large mobile homes along a production line on air cushions, guided by tracks on a floor (FIGS. 1-2), or GB Patent No. 1,277,892 disclosing moving elongate freight containers on modular air cushions which are inserted below the containers (FIGS. 22, 30, 43).
These loads are however of a self-contained and self-supported nature, even if they are elongate and voluminous or even very large.